John McEnery Movies

Director Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet was touted at the time of its release (successfully, if the box-office receipts are any indication), as something of a "youth trip" movie. This is because Zeffirelli broke the long-standing tradition of casting over-aged, sometimes grey-haired players in the title roles. Seventeen-year-old Leonard Whiting plays Romeo, with 15-year-old Olivia Hussey as Juliet. The youthfulness and inexperience of the leading players works beautifully in the more passionate sequences (some of these breaking further ground by being played in the nude). Among the younger players are Michael York as Tybalt and John McEnery as Mercutio. The duel between Romeo and Tybalt starts out as a harmless, frat-boy exchange of insults, then escalates into tragedy before any of the participants are fully aware of what has happened. Photographed by Pasqualino DeSantis on various locations in Italy, Romeo and Juliet was one of the most profitable film adaptations of Shakespeare ever produced. Its most lasting legacy is its popular main theme music, composed by Nino Rota. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Dany (Samantha Eggar) is the ad agency secretary to Caldwell (Oliver Reed) in this psychological crime drama. She is asked to drive him to the airport and park the car in the lot after working at his home the night before. Getting in the wrong lane, she decides to use the car for a weekend getaway and return in time to collect Caldwell upon his return. Soon she is recognized in places she has never been before. She picks up a hippie (John McEnery) and makes love to him only to find he has stolen the car in the morning. Dany finds the car and the hippie, but there is now a dead body in the back seat. She finds where the dead man lived and takes the body to the house. Dany finds erotic nude photos of herself in the strange man's apartment even though the two had never met. She begins to suspect that her boss and his sluttish wife Anita (Stephane Audran) are setting her up to take the fall for the man's murder. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

In this gentle, tragic drama, Olivier (John McEnery) is a wealthy young man with a lively and attractive mother (Valentina Cortese), which is a pity, really, as he can't bear her, or the men she gets involved with. When he gets too upset with her escapades, he begins to break things, or runs off. Otherwise, he spends his time building a boat on the lawn with his friend David (Jean-Pierre Cassal), a poor fisherman whom he grew up with. Though hardly idyllic, the relative calm provided by their friendship is disrupted by Eleonor (Claude Jade), a cute and determined young woman who sets her sights on David. She wants to wean David from his friendship with Olivier and plays on David's long-dormant jealousy of Olivier's wealth and easy life. She also plays the flipside of the jealousy issue, claiming that Olivier has made passes at her. This film is in the French language. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Based on M. Lermontov's novel Vadim, this costume drama, set in Russia during the 1700s, chronicles the battle between a vengeful, anarchic peasant and the tyrannical landowner who killed his mother and father. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Little Malcolm is playwright David Halliwell's brilliantly vicious attack on the hollowness of the 1960s protest movement. Booted out of art school, misfit John Hurt uses his anger to organize a radical anti-establishment organization with two fellow malcontents. What seems at first attractive and trendy turns out to be a dangerous neo-fascist movement. David Warner costars as Hurt's erudite political foe, who finds it hard to stand up against the raw persuasive energy of demagoguery. Ex-Beatle George Harrison produced this searing sociopolitical tome. The film was originally released as Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuch. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Filmed in England, Galileo is based on Charles Laughton's 1947 adaptation of the play by Bertolt Brecht, which, like this 1975 film, was directed by Joseph Losey. Israeli film-star Topol plays the 17th century Italian astronomer, whose theories run contrary to the edicts of the Catholic Church. Forced to renounce his ideas about planetary movement, Galileo nonetheless holds fast to those beliefs to the end of his days, certain that time will vindicate him. Brecht's trademarked "alienation" technique, wherein the audience is constantly reminded that it is watching a play, is muted by Losey's cerebral direction. Galileo was one of producer Ely Landau's American Film Theatre presentations. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Duellists is based on a story by Joseph Conrad, variously titled The Duel and The Point of Honour. Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel play officers in Napoleon's army -- D'Hubert and Feraud, respectively -- who spend their off-hours challenging each other to bloody duels. This goes on for nearly 16 years, with neither man showing any inclination of calling a truce. The final clash finds the gentlemanly D'Hubert getting the upper hand of the obsessed Feraud -- but that's not quite the end of the story. The Duellists was the debut feature for director Ridley Scott; it won the Cannes Film Festival prize for Best First Film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Vincentio (Kenneth Colley), Duke of Vienna, is a good and kindly ruler, but his leniency has allowed vice to thrive. So he decides to leave town temporarily, putting in charge his stern chief deputy, Angelo (Tim Piggott-Smith). Immediately, Angelo condemns the young nobleman, Claudio (Christopher Strauli), to death for getting his sweetheart, Juliet (Jacqueline Pearce), pregnant. Isabella (Kate Nelligan), an aspiring nun who is Claudio's sister, is disgusted by Angelo's suggestion that she "lay down the treasures" of her body to save her brother's life. Meanwhile, the Duke returns to town in the guise of a friar to see how his domain is faring in his absence. When he spies around, he learns of Claudio's imprisonment, and he overhears the dilemma that Angelo has created for Isabella. The helpful ''friar'' then suggests to Isabella that Mariana (Jacqueline Pearce), who was once betrothed to Angelo, take her place in the darkness of Angelo's bedroom. Mariana agrees, and the scheme goes according to plan. However, Angelo reneges on his promise because he fears Claudio will seek revenge if he is released, and instead he orders Claudio's immediate execution. However, Duke Vincentio, still disguised as a friar, persuades the prison warden to spare Claudio and to trick Angelo into thinking Claudio is dead. When Duke Vincentio doffs his disguise and reappears as himself, Angelo, realizing the game is up, asks to be executed to avoid a degrading trial. But Mariana, steadfast in her love for Angelo, pleads for his life. Mercy and a happy ending triumph. Claudio returns from the dead to wed Juliet. Angelo is spared and marries Mariana. The Duke then begs the hand of Isabella. He tells her, ''Dear Isabel, I have a motion much imports your good; whereto if you'll a willing ear incline, what's mine is yours and what is yours is mine.'' ~ Mike Cummings, All Movie Guide

Filmed in Rome and Austria on a budget of $5 million, the made-for-TV biopic Pope John Paul II stars Albert Finney, making his American TV debut as the Polish-born Pontiff. The film begins in 1938, when teen-aged Karol Wojtyla (Michael Crompton), a would-be actor, decides instead to enter the priesthood. Played from age 26 onward by Finney, Wojtyla spends the war years in the Polish anti-Nazi movement. He continues battling for his beliefs with the Communist-ruled Polish government in the postwar years. In 1978, Wojtyla is elected to succeed Pope John Paul I, thereby becoming the first non-Italian pope in four centuries. Pope John Paul II was written with reverence and intelligence by Christopher Knopf; it was originally telecast April 22, 1984. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this made-for-TV thriller, a sportscaster engineers a daring escape from a Soviet prison camp after being snared by a KGB scheme. Mickey Almon (David Keith), a sports star-turned-journalist, arrives in Moscow to cover an international tournament. Soon, though, he's tempted to play the hero once again, this time not as an athlete, but as a smuggler of repressed scientific research. Against the advice of his wife (Nancy Paul), Mickey agrees to help the Russians who've approached him, but the entire intrigue turns out to be a set-up. Physically neglected and emotionally tortured in a stinking hole for several weeks, Mickey agrees to sign a confession after being told that it will guarantee his release. Instead, he receives a ten-year sentence and soon finds himself on a train bound for Siberia. Sewing rough-hewn gloves with the other foreign prisoners and living for the day each month when his care package arrives, Mickey soon resolves to escape or die trying. To that end, he enlists a cynical British spy (Malcolm McDowell) and a group of Soviet prisoners in a plan to escape via a supply train that can get them within reach of the West -- if only they can find a way to get onto it undetected. Gulag was directed by Roger Young, who previously helmed such lauded TV movies as Bitter Harvest and would go on to direct the original televised version of Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

Peter Medak directed this fact-based drama, chronicling the lives of the infamous Kray Brothers, notorious celebrities in 60s London. The Krays were twin gangsters who ruled London's stylish East End club scene, staking out their territory by committing the most violent crimes imaginable, preferring to perform the most torturous acts themselves. The film stars Gary Kemp and Martin Kemp, founding members of the pop group Spandau Ballet, as Ronald and Reginald Kray. The film opens as their mother Violet Kray (Billie Whitelaw) recalls a dream in which she is a swan from which two beautiful babies have hatched. She can't tell if the swans are angels or demons, but the film soon answers that question for her. Brought up in London's East End in the 1930s, Ronald and Reginald Kray are raised in the resentful world of Violet, who is hateful of her lot in life and bitter at the control men have in running the world ("Housework is a lethal business," she says). The twins react to each other almost telepathically and they take out their anger by clogging the nose of their sleeping father (Alfred Lynch), pushing around fellow schoolboys, and even beating each other to pulp at a boxing match. When her mother chastises them for their fight in a fairground boxing ring ("You fight them up, but you don't fight each other"), the twins veer into the London underworld. In their self-contained world of Us-Against-Them, the Krays rapidly rise to the height of power, first taking over the territory of a petty mobster by violent means and then putting together an underworld empire of posh clubs, cars, and fancy suits. But at the height of their fame, the twins begin to break from each other. Reginald falls in love with Frances (Kate Hardie), while Ronald gets involved in a homosexual relationship with one of his underlings. Ronald, in a jealous rage over Frances stealing his brother away from him, becomes even more brutal in his crimes and while the brothers' backs are turned, a group of older mobsters challenge the Krays' authority, invoking a horrible bloodbath that effects not only the two brothers but Frances and Violet as well. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide